National Nurses Movement is Leading Proponent for Single-Payer Healthcare Reforms—“Medicare for All”
Turning their camera on the fastest-growing union in America—and the nation’s largest union of RNs—Bill Moyers’ Journal will feature the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee’s fight for guaranteed, single-payer healthcare in an episode scheduled to air this Friday at 9 p.m. EDT (check local listings at http:// www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/about/airdates.html).
The airing comes as CNA/NNOC, and its allies in the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Healthcare, prepare for a busy summer of healthcare organizing that includes a National Day of Action Against Health Insurance Corporations on June 19th, with a major rally outside a convention by the industry group AHIP (America’s Health Insurance Plans) in San Francisco. (For more information, visit www.GuaranteedHealthcare.org.)
CNA/NNOC formed the Conference, along with Physicians for a National Health Program, Healthcare Now!, and Progressive Democrats of America, to advocate for the kind of guaranteed healthcare on the single-payer model that is succeeding in nearly every other industrialized democracy. The public—and healthcare experts—has repeatedly expressed support for this kind of “Medicare for All” reform, but politicians have been slow to catch up.
CNA/NNOC and fellow single-payer supporters have engaged in a wide variety of innovative organizing tactics in support of their healthcare proposals, including television ads targeted to all Presidential candidates and a series of print ads calling for all Americans to receive the same medical access as Vice President Dick Cheney. "There shouldn't be a double standard," says Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of CNA/NNOC, on the show. "We, as the public, pay for Dick Cheney's care ... why is the government not providing the same type of care to all Americans?"
CNA/NNOC’s efforts have been supported by its rapid growth, and the creation at long last of a national nurses’ movement. CNA/NNOC now represents over 80,000 RNs in all 50 states. For more information, visit www.CalNurses.org.